It’s clear that the energy transformation can’t be done alone. The need for partnerships to deliver complex projects is an obvious point but one, in all humility, that we should remind ourselves of daily.
Vattenfall wants to be free from fossil fuels in a generation. It’s a big challenge, but one that is in line with what our customers and partners demand. If we tried to do it on our own, we would probably fail. So we know we need to forge partnerships – with customers, suppliers, public bodies and governments across Europe – if we are going to deliver.
In the past ten years we have invested more than £3.5 billion in the UK, mostly developing and building windfarms. The name above the door on these windfarms is Vattenfall’s but we couldn’t build them on our own.
We now look forward to our wind power business being joined by new investments in areas such as district heating and electric vehicle charging. Partnership will be the key to their success too.
All our new business areas are positively encouraged to invest by the UK’s energy strategy. We like its challenge to decarbonise, delivering to consumers in a smart, digital, reliable, affordable way. How do we do it? In partnership.
We are moving from an energy sector in which passive consumers are on the receiving end of energy products and can exercise their market power only when their contract is up, to engaged consumers that are interconnected, market participants with far greater control of the ways they produce and use energy.
Consumers as partners? Not in the legal sense, but a positive relationship where we want the same things shouldn’t be a stretch. Partnering with businesses and public bodies to deliver district heating, independent networks and an electric vehicle charging infrastructure isn’t a stretch, and it is essential.
The smart, reliable, affordable and fossil fuel-free future that society wants will not be delivered without industry partners like Vattenfall. Vattenfall in the UK will not deliver its fossil-free investments in wind, district heating, EV-charging infrastructure, independent networks and retail without partners.
A good example of such a partnership was with the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG). In 2002, AREG conceived the pioneering European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, and Vattenfall started working with the group to develop, build and operate the 11-turbine scheme in 2008. We went through a lot together over those ten years. Aberdeen now has its windfarm, and the offshore wind industry has a cutting-edge project that showcases cost-cutting offshore wind innovation.
Now Vattenfall in the UK looks forward to a future focused on the customer and reaching a fossil-fuel free future in partnership with businesses, public bodies and households that understand the need to be free from carbon in the power they use, the heat (and cooling) they enjoy and the cars (and trucks and buses) they drive. Not just fossil fuel-free but affordable, reliable and empowering for customers too.
For Vattenfall, that future is a 4GW wind development pipeline, establishing a British district heating business, investing in EV-charging infrastructure, expanding our retail offer and selling to businesses, and installing and managing some of the smartest independent and private networks around.
Vattenfall is open to partnerships and open about what the solutions are. This is a company that’s driven by curiosity, willing to try something new, searching for engineering and digital excellence, in partnership, to help power smarter living that’s good for the climate. We are bringing to the UK the energy and enthusiasm we have built up over 100 years in north-western Europe.
I have seen so much positive change in the energy industry in the past 20 years. Now we look forward to the next 20 in partnership.